


Somebody Loves You (more than life itself)

by zarinthel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, There is a lot of underlying angst going on, Wingfic, im not sorry this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:43:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6492511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarinthel/pseuds/zarinthel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Potter cooed over Harry’s tiny wings. Her baby was just too cute for words. Just look at him- ten fingers, ten toes, two wing nubs- clearly, the most perfect baby on earth. He would grow up surrounded by all the love in the world, and his wings would be full and glossy and dark, just like his father’s. </p><p>It still hit her, that some orphans were forced to grow up with nothing but the withered remains of their parents love, solitary feathers on skeletal frames. She hugged Harry tighter. <i>You are loved</i> she whispered, as she heard James’s wand fire, his futile call for her to run.<br/>“Please remember. <i>You are loved.</i>”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was partly inspired by that tumblr post about wings that showed love. If anyone wants to offer a link to it, they're welcome to.

Lily Potter cooed over Harry’s tiny wings. Her baby was just too cute for words. Just look at him- ten fingers, ten toes, two wing nubs- clearly, the most perfect baby on earth. He would grow up surrounded by all the love in the world, and his wings would be full and glossy and dark, just like his father’s.  


It still hit her, that some orphans were forced to grow up with nothing but the withered remains of their parents love, solitary feathers on skeletal frames. She hugged Harry tighter. _You are loved_ she whispered, as she heard James’s wand fire, his futile call for her to run.  


“Please remember. _You are loved_.” 

Harry Potter cannot remember a time when he has ever unfurled his wings from their resting place, tightly curled against his back. He is afraid that if Dudley ever sees that he has even one feather, they will be ripped from him, thrown in the trash like common garbage. He is afraid that they will not grow back. He cannot see them, alone in the dark in his cupboard, but he counts them anyway. They are the only proof that someone has ever loved him.

It grows into a habit, to keep his wings hidden at all times. It makes him an even more obvious target, the wingless freak with broken glasses, but he will not risk his feathers. 

It surprises him, that Aunt Petunia allows this deviation from the normal. She’s usually going on and on about the proper way to position your wings, even though hers are nothing to brag about. There are places on her wings where no feathers will ever grow. Harry has read about this. Those are the spots that form when someone who loves you dies, and their feathers all molt at once. He thinks there are supposed to be ways of treating that so it isn’t permanent. His weren’t, of course, but surely Aunt Petunia would get it for herself?

But that’s none of his business.

And so it goes- but it doesn’t get better. Harry used to dream of a place where he would be able to unfurl his wings, but now he knows that even away from Privet Drive, he would be too ashamed to show them. His wing muscles are weak, barely strong enough to support the folded form that his wings have grown accustomed to. As he has grown taller, his wingspan has increased but his feather count hasn’t, his few feather’s only serving to show how much was left uncovered. This is all hypothetical, though. Harry has never seen his wings outstretched. Or at all, really. What mirror would he use?

And then the letters come, and Hagrid comes, and Harry is terrified and amazed and _furious_. His parents did not die in a car accident, he learns. The wizarding world exists, he learns. There are people who treat him like a celebrity but have no care for his wellbeing, he learns. Here is not a safe place to reveal his wings. 

And so he keeps looking. He keeps looking, and looking, until he looks right into the Mirror of Erised. And then he cannot look away. He sees his parents, _his parents_ , young and smiling fiercely back at him. Each has an arm around Harry, but not even their bodies can hide his wings, big and dark and glossy, covered with so many feathers that the tips drag across the floor. He’s crying, crying so hard that his eyes blur and the picture vanishes, but the image is now engraved on his heart, and he is _so glad_ he looked, because heartbreak is nothing to the fact that he has his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair and his parent’s love. 

Dumbledore tells him that all he sees is a pair of warm socks. This is the first time that Harry realizes that Dumbledore is a liar. Those are not the wings of someone whose only desire is for socks. 

But the Mirror of Erised has done nothing to make Harry more willing to open his wings, now that he knows just how much he is lacking. He is lucky to have such good friends, willing to let him keep this one piece of himself completely private. 

The next time he sees the Mirror, he is better able to deal with his loss. Harry doesn’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, as had he just left the Stone alone, neither Voldemort or Dumbledore would have been able to touch it. 

Soon he is back at Privet Drive, and he sure that this is his punishment. He receives no letters, and there are bars upon his window. His room is a mockery of a birdcage, where the bird has always been flightless. Nowhere to fly to, he thinks. He wants to be back at Hogwarts. He wants to be able to use his broom. His time away has caused him to want many things that he has forgotten he cannot have. 

But summer is never the right amount of time, and it comes to an end none too fast. Harry is more than ready to be back at Hogwarts.

He misses the train. Well, he and Ron miss the train, which is honestly so much better than missing the train alone that he cannot explain his gratitude. And then they are flying, and they are flying in a _flying car_ that he’s pretty sure that no one knows how to drive. Snape is mad, but Harry is back at Hogwarts with his friends. He has _friends_ now. He’s back at school with his _friends_. It’s still the best feeling in the world. 

Even better than chocolate frogs, or maybe it tastes exactly like chocolate frogs because that’s what friendship _is_ , eating frogs together and laughing. There is a hollow space above Harry’s back that lets the light in from the outside. Hermione likes that, that they can sit in a circle and talk and she doesn’t need to worry about a reading light.

Harry thinks that’s the best thing he’s ever heard, even though she covered her mouth and seemed kind of horrified after she’d said it. Ron offered to play chess with him. Harry thinks that Ron needs to start finding opponents that actually pose a challenge and aren’t Hermione, because Ron doesn’t know how to win graciously, and Hermione doesn’t know how to accept defeat. 

Speaking of winning graciously, Harry does not like the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He is thinking of maybe permanently skipping the class and just accepting a very bad grade. He certainly won't miss out on anything important. He also thinks that you shouldn’t trust people who dye their wings. How, Harry wonders, do you take love so much for granted that you smear grease on top of it? It makes him angry, and empty. So he doesn’t go to that class very much.

That’s when he starts hearing the words in the walls. And then hears the whispered words in the halls, and that’s so much worse. Heir of Slytherin, they say. Harry has found there no one quite so stupid as ‘they’. 

But time passes, and Harry and Hermione and Ron investigate, and hunt for answers until they find a solution to the stones in the infirmary that used to be people and the blood on the walls but by then Hermione is stone, too. And it is just him and Ron. Well, him and Ron and Lockhart. But Lockhart never counted for much, and after the incident with Ron’s wand he counted not at all.

In the chamber is the Basilisk, but the true horror of that room is the diary. Tom Marvolo Riddle, Harry thinks. His name is Tom Riddle, and he hurts little girls that are scared and alone in an unfamiliar place that should have been home. 

He stabs the books with the sword of Gryffindor, because it the enemy here, not the Basilisk. 

And then Harry starts to talk. He speaks and he begs and he pleads, but the Basilisk is mad of loneliness. “He sssaid he would let me out,” it hisses, over and over. “He sssaid he would take me home.”

“Where is home?” Harry asks in desperation.  


“Gone,” moans the Basilisk, and it’s screams echo throughout the chamber. “He sssaid he would take me home.” Harry glances over at Ginny, lying unconscious and far too pale on the chamber floor. He needs to get her to the hospital wing. 

“Is there a way for you to get into the forest?” Harry asks. He doesn’t want to kill this creature. He doesn’t want it to kill him, either. But life is not as we wish it to be, and so the Basilisk turns its gaze to Harry and snaps its fangs and Harry pulls free the sword of Gryffindor and charges the Basilisk. 

He wins, and yet would have died all the same but for the tears of a phoenix. 

“I’m sorry too,” he tells the bird. “Did you know its name?” But Harry does not know the language of birds, and so he has no name to put on the grave he later builds for yet another victim of Tom Riddle. 

The rest of the year is spent with Ron and Hermione, as they recover and pull together and mourn the loss of innocence. They are not surprised that there was evil in the school, not after last year, but Harry had hoped. In vain, it seemed. Ron decided to challenge his younger sister to chess. She was a bad loser too, but she had much more practice at it.

So another year passes, and still his wings are clenched behind his back. He barely feels the cramps, anymore. That is a lie. He feels them everyday, and they pulse in a duet with the scar on his forehead.

A flash of green, and screaming. Harry jerks awake, alarmed by the stranger that is still in the cabin with him. The stranger that scared away the screams, Harry reminds himself. The stranger that is giving him chocolate? The stranger with wings almost as patchy as Harry’s, though he wears them where everyone can see. They match his coat, Harry thinks, and then he winces. Harry’s summer clothes match his wings, too. The stranger's name is Professor Remus Lupin, and he is the new DADA professor. Already, the year is looking up. 

As usual, his vague optimism is no match for reality.

The Dementors haunt his waking hours, and he can hear a women in his dreams. He can hear a man, too. They are both screaming, with rage and despair and horrified surprise. Harry thinks that he needs to learn how to cast a patronus, or maybe just a charm that will make Malfoy shut up. He’s not picky. He doesn’t like looking at Draco’s wings, pale as his hair with plumage long enough to brush the floor. It is petty, but he dislikes the reminder that even someone like Draco has parents who love him.  


He doesn’t mind about Ron and Hermione, of course. He thinks that they deserve to have wings so large that they have trouble walking through doors. Then he gets the news that Sirius Black is after him. He doesn’t know why everyone expects him to randomly run off and try to fight a mass murderer. Even Ron and Hermione seem to think that that’s the kind of thing that he would do. 

He also meets a dog. The first time he saw it, he thought he saw a shadow of wings behind the grim omen, but he’s petted it and fed it and it seems like a normal dog to him. Harry wonders if a dog counts as one of the pets that Hogwarts students are allowed to have. He doesn’t think so, but Ron still has his rat, and rats aren’t in the regulations either. 

That’s what he tells the dog, anyway. Then Sirius Black is seen breaking into the Boy’s Dormitory and the castle is thrown into an uproar. Harry is angry and scared, and also desperately wants to know why the Dementors are still here now that it is very obvious that they cannot keep Black out of the castle. 

The boggart is a bad day for everyone, and Harry is just as glad that class was canceled before they got to his turn. He knows what his bogart will resemble, and he doesn’t need people seeing what he will look like when he loses his last remaining feathers. He doesn’t need to see that. 

Harry likes Professor Lupin, even if he gets sick a lot. He wishes that Snape did not act as a substitute. He does not turn in the essay on werewolves. Anything that Snape wants him to write that badly very clearly does not need to be written. Ron agrees with him, and Hermione huffs at both of them and turns hers in anyway. It’s the work that matters, she says, not the teachers. Harry is glad that he didn’t turn his in, though. He doesn’t think that Professor Lupin was very fond of that assignment. 

Time flies, and so does his brand new broom, right into the Whomping Willow. He hears the screams again, and he feels so _cold_. His wings are useless lumps as he plummets towards the ground. After Christmas, Professor Lupin offers to teach Harry the Patronus charm, and Harry jumps at the chance.  
Professor Lupin offers a bogart to practice against, but Dementors are not Harry’s worst fear. 

“No?” Asks the professor. 

“No,” admits Harry, shamefaced. “A Dementor’s Kiss is not my worst nightmare.” He doesn’t understand the expression that flickers across Professor Lupin’s face and hides in his eyes. They keep practicing anyway, though Harry still cannot produce more than a wisp. Lupin still offers Harry chocolate after each lesson, even though Harry pointed out that he doesn’t need to. 

“You’re a growing boy, Harry,” says Lupin. “Of course you need chocolate.”

Life has a way of changing all of a sudden, and Harry is almost bursting with hope. His godfather is innocent! His godfather wants him! The previous summer with the Dursley’s will be his last time with them. But the hope slips from his grasp, splinters and falls and breaks apart like the broom that Sirius gave him. 

His last sight of his godfather is him waving from Buckbeak’s back, his wings stretched to their fullest. Sirius’s wings had been so dirty when Harry had first seen them, his feathers all gathered in patches, glossy spots with large empty spans where more grew in every time Harry and Remus looked at him. It had been so beautiful, Harry thought, seeing his love leave a mark. He holds that memory close to his heart. It will, Harry thinks, make a Patronus strong enough to repel all of the Dementors of Azkaban. 

Harry hates Severus Snape. He had disliked the vulture wearing a man’s form before, but now he hates him. An accident, that now the entire school knows that Lupin is a werewolf. Harry snorts. As as accidental as asking a group of first years seventh year material and blaming them for not knowing. As accidental as having a group of third years write on the best ways of killing werewolves, more like.

He had begged Remus to stay, him and Hermione and Ron adding their pleas to the hundreds of other students that knew the type of DADA professor they were going to get the year after a particularly competent one. Dumbledore never made the same mistake twice in a row, after all. 

But Remus refused to stay, guilty about missing his potion dose and worried about how Sirius was doing now that he was out of Azkaban. He finished out the year and walked Harry to the train station, his wings held high. 

Looking at Remus waving at him through the window of the Hogwarts Express, Harry could not help but compare his wings to the first time that he had seen them, his feathers faded and ragged and hanging on anyway. Harry had not noticed, the change had been so gradual, but feathers now covered all of his wingspan, chocolate brown softly shining in the morning light. There were shadows that nothing would ever heal, but when Harry waved goodbye, Remus flexed his wings in response. 

Harry spent the ride trying to hold back tears. That was an address usually only given to family members, and he had never thought he would see it directed at him. It was the first time that Harry had ever regretted concealing his wings. He would have liked to be able to reply in turn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a year or so, I'm sorry about that.

The summer is awful, but Harry had expected no less. He is surprised when owls arrive on his birthday. There are four packages in total, one from Hagrid, one from Ron (and the Weasley Clan) one from Hermione, and one from Sirius and Remus. Harry has never eaten so much cake in his life. Harry has never received anything for his birthday before, so this is not exactly surprising.

But the best gift yet is the tickets to the Quidditch Cup. Harry is incredibly excited to be seeing this with his friends- with the Weasleys who enjoy having him around, Mr. Weasley who looks at him and then blinks for a second, as if he could possibly mistake Harry for one of his own sons, and Mrs. Weasley, who would never mistake Harry for anyone other than himself, Fred and George who tease him for small things and gave him their most prized possession when he needed it, Ron who broke him from his barred window based on nothing but pure blind trust in Harry’s own words-- he doesn’t know what he would do without them, he thinks. He doesn’t want to know. 

The Quidditch Cup is glorious until it isn’t, as every spectacle Harry’s ever been a part of tends to go. The Dark Mark, flashing in the sky-- a vulnerable target, falsely accused-- the cycle repeats, and it _hurts_ , it hurts every time, a new innocence violated. 

The Tri-Wizard Tournament is... it’s something that, Harry thinks with relief, has absolutely nothing to do with him.

It is truly, _truly_ terrible, how wrong he is about that. When Dumbledore called his name he shrank away, but now all he wants to do is scream, yell out to the whole world that _he did not want this_ \-- but the only one taking notes on what he is saying is Rita Skeeter, with her red nails and poison quill and her carefully primped wings gilded with the faintest edge of silver. 

Harry refuses to be jealous of Skeeter. He refuses.

She writes about him and she writes _awful_ things, she writes of his hidden wings being the sign of a secret love affair, a sign of his childhood sacrifice, a sign that he cut off his own wings so as not to be bound by such trifles--

She writes other things, but Hermione found out he was reading them and took to burning them before he could see more than a bit of the titles. 

The first trial is dragons, and Harry prepares not at all, perhaps procrastinating out of bitterness from his forced participation, perhaps using the powers of denial to their fullest extent-- what he thinks is their fullest extent, as his encounters with the Ministry have been few and far between. 

He summons his broom, and the dragon breaks Unbreakable chains just to chase him. 

Cedric Diggory is the kind of boy who young impressionable witches and wizards make posters of and then hang them on their wall, so that they can stare at them dreamily when they are supposed to be studying. Star of his Quidditch team, prefect, almost guaranteed Head Boy in his seventh year, handsome in the way that you could show off to both your friends and your parents-- even his wings are golden, so warm and pretty in in the light. 

Harry has heard a great deal about Cedric over the course of the year, and as far as he can tell it’s all true. Without Cedric he wouldn’t have even known where to begin with the golden egg. 

_But past an hour, the prospect’s black  
Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back_

The riddle rings in his head while he waits at the bottom of the lake, and he-- he trusts Dumbledore, he does, but...that’s Fleur’s little sister, enchanted at the bottom of the lake, her veela blood showing through her white butterfly wings that drift back and forth in the water. They look so delicate, so fragile.. He can’t just leave her there, Harry realizes with a sinking in his gut. No matter what, he cannot leave her behind. 

Gaining points for heroism, losing points for disobedience-- Harry can feel his blood boiling. _Those were people_ , he wants to shout. Those were my best friends, that was Cedric’s girlfriend, Fleur’s sister-- we braved a dragon for a fake egg, why did you think we would do less for the people we love?

_Nobody loves you_ whispers a voice, and it sounds like Aunt Petunia. 

For the third task, they butcher the Quidditch Pitch, Harry’s favorite place in all of Hogwarts. It hurts, that his sources of comfort can be taken away so easily, but... it’s an old hurt. He’s always know that, deep down. 

His friends help him prepare for this final challenge, and Harry sinks into the knowledge that he has people-- lots of people, five, maybe even six people-- who care very much about his well being, who find him spells and tips and tricks, who want him to win--

“We can both be winners,” he says to Cedric Diggory, as they touch the trophy, a firm grasp on each handle. 

“Kill the spare,” says Voldemort, and Wormtail points his wand.

Cedric’s death is not quiet, or peaceful, or fast. Harry will say otherwise, of course. To Cedric’s parents, to Dumbledore, even to his friends-- but he remembers. The Killing Curse is Unforgivable-- because it _hurts_ , dying _hurts_ and Harry shut his eyes but he still _remembers._

Wormtail's wings are completely bare. Even when Harry had last seen him, when he ran from Sirius and Remus, he had had some feathers still hanging on to his wings, though they had already begun to molt. 

Did he pluck them out himself? Harry wonders. Or did he watch Remus’s love end, feather by feather. Peter Pettigrew is a coward, Harry thinks. Of course he watched the feathers fall. 

“Bone of the father,” says Peter Pettigrew. “Flesh of the servant. Blood of the enemy.” Harry is almost relieved to give blood. What if he had taken a feather? 

Voldemort is forged anew, but there is no love in his resurrection, and so he stands before his newly called Death Eaters with no wings on his back. It is viscerally awful, to see a man without wings-- if there is such a thing as a man without wings, if something can be human if it does not have wings--

Harry throws up on the gravestone moss, and even the Death Eaters cannot hide their flinches. 

The Cruciatus Curse is a burning despair, liquid fire and sizzling acid and the loss of any time between now and eternity. 

Voldemort asks him for a duel after using the worst torture spell in the world on him directly before hand. Harry wants to laugh, for a wild, confused second. Is Voldemort’s every deed a mockery of wizard customs? He throws off the Imperius Curse, refusing to bow. Death is coming, Harry knows. 

For a moment, he thinks of the mirror of Erised. He’ll be dying even younger than his mother, who gave her life for his. _I can’t die here_ , he thinks, silent terror echoing through his brain, hands trembling. _I can’t die, I still have to--_

“ _Avada Kedavra_ ,” says Voldemort. 

“ _Expelliarmus!_ ” says Harry, and their spells crash together and light up the entire graveyard with their power. 

Echoes, Voldemort’s victims called from their unjust grave-- a ghastly number, multitudes on multitudes of ghosts that thrum with the horrors thrust upon them. Their wings have no substance but the noise of their flapping, the rattle and whisper of every feather fills the graveyard as they watch brother wands duel. 

Cedric is there, more solid for the newness of his demise, his corpse not yet cold. 

“ _Take me back_ ,” he whispers, one last wish from beyond death’s veil. 

Harry feels a hand touch his shoulder, feels a second hand brush across his back. 

“ _You can take him_ ,” says James Potter, ruffling his hand through Harry’s hair. “ _Love you, kiddo. Knew you’d be the best thing that ever happened to me.”_

“ _Show that bastard what you’ve got_ ,” says Lily Potter, planting a kiss on his forehead. 

The light swells, and Voldemort is thrown backwards into the mass of his followers. 

“ _Run, Harry,_ ” says James. “ _We’ll hold them off!_ ” He’s grinning, wings flared. The glow around his head is so dazzling that Harry has to blink back tears. 

“ _Fly, Harry_ ,” says Lilly, giving him a push. 

Harry stumbles over to Cedric’s body and lunges for the portkey, all the time hearing the beating of wings pulsing to his galloping heart rate. The world blurred around him and he slammed into the ground, clutching at bare soil for lost stability. 

Nothing seemed real. 

Dumbledore kicked over Moody’s stunned body and watched as it turned to Barty Crouch Jr. 

Stories were told, of deceit and control and betrayal. 

Sirius was waiting in Dumbledore’s office, face pale with fright- paler, indeed than Harry had seen him when he first escaped from Azkaban. 

“Harry,” he said, voice shaking with emotion. “Harry, what happened-- your wings!” 

Harry froze. 

The sound of beating wings had never left him, but he had thought that to be just another echo, not--

He could see them, behind him. Glossy black with a hint of green, so very full that they brushed both sides of the door and touched down to the carpet, each feather soft and perfect. Harry tried to speak, tried to swallow the lump in his throat. 

He stepped into Sirius’s arms instead, breathed into his leather jacket as he wrapped his wings around Sirius and Sirius did the same. 

“My parents loved me,” Harry whispered to Sirius like it was his most precious secret, and it was-- horrible things had happened-- he needed to talk to Cedric’s parents-- but it was so, so precious to him. 

Sirius cupped his hand to Harry’s ear and leaned in, so close Harry could feel the warm puff of breath against his skin. “I love you too, Harry,” he whispered back. 

They clung to each other in a cocoon of feathers, and for one moment the world gave them peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is as far as I intend to write. Some things about the story:
> 
> -Sirius & Remus Live Happily Ever After
> 
> If you want alternate povs feel free to request them and say what character you want to hear from, and I'll see what I can do.

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be in two parts! this is not the end. Thank you for reading. 
> 
> Please comment, a sentence, a phrase, a scream, I love all comments.


End file.
